With the pervasive presence of voice communication devices, there is also a common need to share visual information as well. Many consumers have expressed the need to share family photographs with others, as is evidenced in part by the rapid adoption of digitized photography and photo album software. Likewise, many customers find voice-only interactions with businesses wanting, as evidenced in part by the rapid growth in visually-oriented web-based customer support. An early alternative to voice telephony has been video telephony. Video telephony allows telephone calls in which both caller and calling party can see each other via a visual display. The visual display and camera needed at each end of the call might be attached to the phone, to a PC, or to a television. The slow adoption of this form of communication is partly due to the need co-diffusion of the technology (i.e. both parties need similar equipment), the expense and difficulty of managing the technology, and the lack of interest by many consumers.
The rapid development of the World Wide Web and the Internet has provided alternative avenues of sharing information. For example, IP (Internet Protocol) cobrowsing is a process that allows users to control web browsing on their personal computers (PCs) and on PCs operated by other PC users. Thus, the uniform resource locator (URL) displayed in one browser is also displayed on another browser. Depending on the application, control might be symmetric (shared by both users) or asymmetric (controlled by only one user). Other collaborative PC applications allow multiple users to simultaneously control the viewing and editing of the same document. In order to use the above methods of sharing web browsing and other applications, however, both users are obviously required to have access to a PC. Most households in the U.S. do not have PCs. PCs currently have a market penetration of roughly forty percent of U.S. households, and far fewer use such PCs for web browsing (though they may use the Internet from work).
On the other hand, approximately 65% of U.S. households subscribe to cable television and cable networks can be easily accessed by over 90% of U.S. households. Methods currently exist that allow a television set to be used as a web browser to access the Internet, e.g. WebTV. Such arrangements, however, rely on upstream data paths either through a cable or telephone connection. Navigating the World Wide Web requires a separate keyboard or a specialized remote control. Moreover, the set top box required for such arrangements tends to be costly and also tends to be difficult to use by people who are not familiar with web browsers and URLs. Accordingly, there are many people who would benefit from the ability to see certain web sites occasionally without requiring the need to browse on a regular basis. One example of such a person would be a cable TV viewer who occasionally desires information from a site such as Pointcast but otherwise is not interested in web browsing or computer use. Another example is a personal computer user who desires to send a graphic image to a person who has access to only a cable TV, e.g. a PC-enabled family who wants to send a picture of a newborn baby while simultaneously talking to the far-away grandparents who only have access to cable TV and a telephone line.
The discussion above suggests three recent market trends that are relevant as background to the current invention: (1) the slow growth of video telephony and WebTV; (2) the development and growth of Internet-based cobrowsing techniques; and (3) the rapid growth of methods that allow consumers to create digitized photographs, store them in a personal computer, and share them via the Internet with close friends and relatives. Accordingly, given these three market trends, it would be advantageous to devise a novel mechanism for directing data (such as an audiovisual signal) across a data network (such as the Internet) to a particular cable TV.